The India Board Game Designers Collective made a splash in 2025 with a successful Kickstarter featuring three culturally rich print-and-play games: Tadoba: Jungle Safari, Sinauli Unearthed, and Muziris. During the campaign, I had the chance to interview the Collective to talk about board game culture in India, how the group formed, and what it means to tell regional stories through game design.
Due to a combination of poor timing, questionable organization skills, and life being life, I never actually published the interview. The campaign has since concluded successfully (you can find it here), but the story behind these games—and the people who made them—felt too important to leave unpublished.
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
India Board Game Designers Collective, established in 2023, is a group of board game designers, developers and artists who have come together to create culturally rich Indian board games. Our aim is to tell Indian stories to the world in the form of board games. Our mission is to make games that are accessible, ethical, and representative of India, for players everywhere.
What is the board game culture like in India?
As the home of many ancient board games, India has a rich historic connection with board games. Our famous epic, the Mahabharata, features a narrative where two royal families play a game with dice. Even the game Snakes and Ladders had its origins in India. Families in India still play games such as the above Snakes and Ladders or Ludo along with many different card games.
When it comes to modern board game culture, it is still evolving. While there are many pockets in the country where board games meetups and cafes are blossoming, a large part of the country is still not familiar with this concept. It’s a very exciting phase for the board game hobby. A city like Bengaluru, has a board game meetup happening in some cafe at least on six days of a week. And the gamers continue playing till the early hours of the morning.
How did all of you come together?
We have a large Indian board game design community that is run on WhatsApp. We tend to share insights, challenges and our success stories. Most of the game designers met due to this community, and we ended up working together on different projects. We also bonded together over multiple playtests or game design workshops and late night discussions. Some of us decided that we needed a better structured way to design games collectively, which is why we decided to create this Collective.
We were also deeply inspired by the Studio Model that is adopted by some international publishers. In the Studio Model, each person takes on a certain role for a project and then might take on a new role for the new project.
Are there ways in which you think that your Indian culture makes your games unique?
Indian culture is colourful and larger than life. We see it in our weddings, our choice of clothes, our food and our social interactions. We love to indulge all senses when we make board games, just as when we make food. This makes our game mechanics and art deeply thematic.
India is also a highly diverse country. There are 22 constitutionally recognized languages and many more dialects, each place in India having its own unique culture and undiscovered stories. This makes Indian games highly varied, with each designer bringing unique themes and stories from the community where they were born, its rich history, real-life politics, hilarious superstitions, and lived experiences. Stories that the world has not yet seen.
Because of India’s population, we always have friends and family nearby to play games with! This makes Indian games a part of the social fabric of our life. That means Indian games have a lot of player interaction, higher player counts, and an ability to spark discussions and exciting conversations.
Tell us about your Kickstarter campaign.
We have launched our first crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, featuring three diverse games:
- Sinauli Unearthed – Designed by Neha Mitta, with art by Amit Ghadge.
- Tadoba : Jungle Safari – Designed by Amit Ghadge, with art by Purnima Mandolik and Tina Pasad.
- Muziris – Designed by Deepak Muraleedharan, with art by Anshika Gaur.
The games are full fledged board games that we have shrunk to the print and play format to make it easier to share with the world.
Each game designer has a personal connection with the theme of the game, as the regions that they are based on are homes of the designers. Deepak hails from Kerala where the ancient port of Muziris once was, Neha comes from Uttar Pradesh where the site of Sinauli is, and Amit is from Maharashtra, the state that hosts the massive jungle of Tadoba. The Collective also includes Sidhant Chand and Andy Desa, who took on the role to administer the project during this phase.
Our campaign had a target of $300 and we were funded within 90 minutes. It was super exciting. We also received the “Project We Love” tag from Kickstarter, which makes us feel extra special as the Games team at Kickstarter believed in our project.
What challenges have you faced as you’ve worked to design your games and launch your Kickstarter?
There were a few key challenges along the way. The team members had to deal with multiple personal and professional issues during this two year period. While each designer was responsible for the design of their own games, we all contributed to each game by playtesting and suggesting changes. This meant that we needed to be very active all throughout. However, that was not always possible. Being spread over multiple locations also meant that the team could not meet in person. You may be surprised, but the collective members have never been in a single location. Most of our communication has been online and synchronizing every one’s calendar wasn’t the most fun.
We planned to launch a Kickstarter campaign with almost zero budget. We relied on the excellent board game design community to spread the word about the games and our collective. We are thankful to all those who offered their precious time in playtesting our games, the different cafes and meetup organizers in India offering their support throughout the development and also the reviewers from across the world who spread the news about our games.
What are your plans for the future?
After the success of this Kickstarter, the team is busy developing solo modes for the games. We want to ensure that we deliver the games in the best format for all our backers. This will take us at least a month. After that, we will regroup as a collective and decide the next steps. We certainly want to continue to design more authentic games and launch them on a crowdfunding platform. We also have plans to conduct focussed design workshops for the community to help those who are new to this space. Particularly, sharing our learnings from this Kickstarter campaign with the Indian game designer community so that they can also take their stories to the world. In addition, we plan to organize an event focussed on playtesting games.
Stay connected with the work of the India Board Game Designers Collective on their website at https://www.ibgdc.com/.
